The present invention relates to a technique of delivering an audio signal.
In stores such as restaurants and boutiques, it is a general procedure to play background music (hereinafter abbreviated as BGM) using cable broadcast. However, to use cable broadcast for reproduction of BGM, it takes considerable time, labor, and cost to install cable broadcast receiving equipment. It is therefore difficult to introduce such equipment. Furthermore, in cable broadcast, a playing schedule of music (i.e., when to play what tunes) is entirely left to the broadcasting station side and hence it is difficult to play BGM according to a user's tastes.
In view of the above, Patent document 1 proposes a BGM terminal apparatus capable of playing BGM according to a program written by a user itself rather than a program written by the broadcasting station: side as in the case of cable broadcast. This apparatus makes it possible to play BGM according to a program written by a user itself.
However, with the technique of Patent document 1, it is necessary for a user to, for example, add up and pay use fees of individual tunes which are composed works. This is complicated work. As for the adding-up of use fees of tunes, Patent document 2 proposes a system in which to reduce the time and labor taken to record use results of composed works and make a report relating to their uses, logs of composed works reproduced by a reproducing apparatus are collated with a database by using ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) codes, POS codes, or the like and pieces of use results information of reproduced composed works are thereby collected.
[Patent document 1] JP-A-9-247105
[Patent document 2] JP-A-2005-209084
However, in the technique of Patent document 2, composed works are collated by referring to codes (information) recorded on a CD (compact disc) such as ISRC codes or POS codes. Therefore, tunes that are assigned no such codes cannot be collated. After all, an operator is required to input pieces of identification information of composed works. This is complicated work.